Moneysaving Wagg or Tails.com?

Neptune

Having just read the 'push' for Tails dog food via the newsletter it was a little disappointing to not see the 'moneysaving' comparison. This is after all a moneysaving website / forum. While I appreciate many have a view on cost vs quality, these measures in the main are subjective and if this was applied to all moneysaving, we would spend all day debating such issues to no real end. For my part I have a Field Trails winning working German Pointer who is fed on Wagg. Wagg was recommended to me by a friend who has a English Spaniel field trials champion, fed on Wagg, and I'll leave it at that.

So in a purely moneysaving aspect I looked at the Tails.com offer in the newsletter, which essentially boils down to 4.93Kg of dog food for £3.60 or £0.73p per Kg.

However currently 'Wagg Worker' (https://groceries.asda.com/product/dry-dog-food-mixers/wagg-worker-chicken-veg-complete-dry-adult-dog-food/1000080262634) at ASDA is £9.00 per 16Kg, or £0.56 per Kg.

It strikes me that for an average dog owner, you'll get even better mileage as you'll almost certainly be using a smaller portion size than that recommended for the equivalent weight working dog, who will have higher energy requirements.

So in terms of mere moneysaving terms (and Martin himself makes this point often), Wagg would appear to be the better choice.

Katiehound

Wagg might not be better quality
Somewhere there is a website that compares pretty much all dog food in terms of content- then you see exactly what you are feeding your dog.
Whilst the Tails offer is clearly meant to tempt you- you could just buy this as a treat- it's not a 'push' it's just telling you about a current offer.
 Using that emotive phrase I could say that MSE is 'pushing' Halifax bank!

Money saving dog food? depends what your dog will eat, if it has allergies etc. It's not always wise to buy cheap (equally dearest isn't always 'the best').  It's also a good tip to note that if you buy 'working dog' food it's VAT free.

Sky_

There are many foods with very similar compositions to Wagg, which are far cheaper to feed.  Check out 'allaboutdogfood.co.uk'.

Congrats on having a field trials winning dog.  I have a gorgeous young (working strain) retriever who is fed on Forthglade and is very healthy and happy for it, but--unfortunately--the closest she'll get to actually working is a the usual pet dog training with a bit of agility thrown in.

Neptune

I made the original specific point about 'moneysaving', and qualified it by reference to the fact Martin himself quite often makes this point in regard to demonstrable cost vs perceived quality. (Objective vs Subjective) measures.

It would also be equally valid to state "Wagg might be better quality" as "Wagg might NOT* be better quality"; * my emphasis.

I can't think of a time when Halifax has been highlighted on MSE, without a direct comparison to, or with other similar, like-for-like institutions, and hence my point. It would have been better to have included Tails.com as part of a broader examination of inexpensive ways to feed a dog.

The simple fact is there is no real way of measuring 'quality', it is always going to be a subjective measure and hence my desire in the original post to stay away from inclusion or mention of such a measure. Just the wish to focus on the cost per kilo. People will always make a quality / suitability judgement themselves, based on many individual factors.

As for Dog feed.....

As an example, DogMunch food is stated to contain 30% meat, where as DogGrub is stated to contain a miserly, in comparision, 15% meat. DogMunch to some may seam the 'quality' feed with it's higher meat content and by inference lower 'filler' content. However we then discover DogMunch uses mechanically recovered meat (e.g Baader meat), while DogGrub feed uses only hand recovered 'finest' cuts and it's so called 'filler' (many comments on MSE in regard to dog food seem to use this term to infer that rice, cereal and starch are a negative, inferior, ingredient. However cereal, rice and starch provide essential components of a healthy dogs diet, for working / active dogs these high-carb ingredients are essential to fuel them throughout their day) is a good quality brown rice. So which is now the quality product?

I have come across 'allaboutdogfood.co.uk' before. Whilst I appreciate it may be a useful tool there are some question we have to ask ourselves.

On their website it states "Despite not living in good old Blighty, I do get back very regularly and am lucky enough to have a dedicated group of UK dog owners, pet food retailers and pet care professionals who help me to stay up to date with all of the industry goings on."

So, just to play Devils advocate, I have some friends who own dogs (dedicated group of UK dog owners), and I know some shop owners who sell dog food amongst other things (pet food retailers), and my wife's friend is a dog groomer and another friend is a dog walker (pet care professionals), I am now qualified to register a domain and review dog feeds, without publishing the details of my retailers, professionals and dog owners, for the public to review and investigate, without that information it really means nothing.

I also wanted to see how a feed would fare on 'allaboutdogfood.co.uk'. Lets take a look at our possible hypothetical feeds of choice, the more expensive DogMunch, and the cheaper DogGrub!

Lets go to https://www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk/instant-review-generator and feed, as it were, DogMunch (our high meat content feed) details!

It's an extruded feed, and we don't know anything about the 'advanced options'. We put in the ingredients we do know about (the facts) taken from the packaging (Meat 30%, Wheat (our cereal filler), Fat, Minerals, Vegetables) to get our review score for DogMunch = 40%, not great but not bad!

So sadly now lets input DogGrub, our filler rich, meat sparse feed.

As before it's an extruded feed, and we don't know anything about the 'advanced options'. We put in the ingredients we do know about (the facts) taken from the packaging (Barley (our majority cereal filler), Meat 15% (our lower meat content) Fat, Minerals, Vegetables) to get our review score for DogGrub = 41%, wow! what just happened, our high filler, low meat content feed just scored higher?

Well what about the very cheap, value TatFeed, were just found, it's almost the same as DogGrub, but they can't even keep the same type of cereal filler and put in whatever they can get at the time, so specify just 'Cereal' (Cereal (our majority cereal filler), Meat 15% (our lower meat content) Fat, Minerals, Vegetables) to get our review score for Tatfeed = 62% !!!!!!!! Let's feed TatFeed, it's great stuff!

It might be worth reminding people about how to successfully transition a dog to a new feed, just like when they were puppies moving to adult feed.

Katiehound, very good point to highlight for those that aren't aware, about dog foods formulated specifically for working dogs being VAT free and therefore less in cost.

Sky_ congrats on your retriever, sure they will provide years of enjoyment. Agility is a great way to create a bond with your dog, exercise their minds and bodies, as well as being a fantastic way to ensure their social needs get met.